I Guess I’m Obligated to Blog About This?
The geek community is ASPLODING as a leaked, cracked copy of MacOS X Tiger for x86 hit Torrent sites about 3 days ago. Supposedly, several people have been able to Dukes of Hazzard this thing onto plain-jane beige boxes.
This is historical for several reasons. First off, this could actually provide a(nother) decent alternative to Windows, at least for the hardcore geeks out there. Of course, that’s small beans compared to the realization that future Macintoshes (since pairing up with Intel to produce all future systems) are…not really Macintoshes, but run-of-the-mill Intel boxes running an x86 version of OS X. What does this mean? Well, the problem is, Apple is a hardware company, not a software company. They just happen to have a gorgeous OS running on their (aesthetically gorgeous…and overpriced) hardware. When people start to realize that PCs and Macs are now basically exactly the same thing under the hood, where does their market go?
When you purchase an Apple computer, you pay for a complete package: A self-contained computer with the OS and the majority of its functionality included, much like you got when you bought a computer before the IBM compatible days. In the very near future, the make-or-break decision to buy Apple hardware will be based on the OS, and since the only thing keeping the OS from running on non-Apple hardware (your shitty Dell, for example) is an easily-cracked software security measure, there is basically no reason to buy Apple’s hardware to use their OS. Sure, your soccer moms will still be buying off the shelf, but geeks don’t like to pay for their operating system.
On the other hand, just like software piracy gave the original Playstation a serious booster shot, making MacOS X available to more people (even if it’s just software pirates) could make Apple more popular in the future. As it stands, Apple is like an elite club with a high buy-in. If it becomes possible to run the OS on cheap, standard PC hardware, it could give Apple the userbase it needs to actually compete with Microsoft in the OS market. MAYBE. Obviously, I’m no market anaylst, so I have no idea what this could mean for Apple. Hell, they could go out of business for all I know.
One thing I DO know is that I’m getting a copy of this cracked Tiger to try it out myself.
2 Responses to “I Guess I’m Obligated to Blog About This?”
should you admit to that online?
Of course I’m not REALLY going to try it. It CLEARLY violates the DMCA.
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